Astra Inclinant

02 ⠀ A tragedy in the making.

TWO
A tragedy in the making.

Igarashi Keiko is tired, and it only has very little to do with the short amount of sleep she was granted the previous night. Patience is no virtue of hers, too used to walking straight ahead and to Hell whoever cannot follow, but she finds that she will need a lot of it to get used to the three people walking beside her. Satoru showed up to their meeting point characteristically late, still wearing the usual carefree smile and easygoing attitude only he can afford to constantly sport, for what is there for the strongest to ever worry about? If she were any less tired, she would write him a list of those things, but as it stands, she prefers quickening her pace and pretending she doesn't know him.

It is Yūji who seems the most enthusiastic of their lot, though. Ever since he and his two classmates were dropped off in Harajuku by one of the school's assistant managers, he hasn't walked past a single corner shop without gawking at them or past a street-food stand without buying something. This, along with his incessant questioning about sorcery and the society built around it, which barely makes sense at times, makes Keiko regret her lack of sleep. She cannot reasonably blame him for knowing nothing of the world she grew up in, of course, as he was only human before lending his flesh to the devil. Still, between Yūji's seemingly never-ending energy, Satoru's usual exasperating personality and Megumi quite literally glaring his way through the crowd, Keiko realises she misses Osamu. Not that she would say it out loud—she would never hear the end of it.

In that light, Keiko, admittedly, has high expectations for the latest addition to their small class.

It doesn't take much more than a glance to get a solid grasp on the kind of person Kugisaki Nobara is. She's an open book filled with epic tales of unwavering and relentless female warriors, written for lonesome little girls sick with wanderlust. A novel far too beautiful, far too exciting for one to ever wish to reach the end of it. With amber eyes boring through one's soul and stripping it bare—for she reads others as easily as they read her, give and take, action and reaction—she's all side-glares and annoyed huffs interrupted and eased by high-pitched laughter and quick, smart comments. Her hair dyed a pretty caramel colour, one would tend to think it suits her like no other could—she's burnt sugar, insanely sweet yet desperately quick to combust.

Nobara is quick to judge. It is something she has no shame in admitting and it isn't an inherently bad thing, she will argue, seeing as she does not hold her first impressions against anyone nor is she opposed to potentially changing her opinion later on. Still, at first glance, she finds herself disappointed with the group she is being lumped with.

The first boy, Itadori Yūji, does not strike her as the sharpest tool in the box. He introduces himself with a mouthful of popcorn, keeps running into people as he's too busy gaping at the Tokyo architecture to check where he steps, and the red of his hood and shoes looks criminal next to the blue of his uniform.

The other one barely spares her a look as he mutters his name and nothing else, before looking away like he couldn't care less about her presence—which is absurd, in Nobara's opinion, because she's a gift. Fushiguro Megumi, bland as his uniform suggests and haughty as they come, will not be the one to raise the general level of their class in her eyes.

And it ends with Igarashi Keiko, who is only a step above Megumi because she at least gives her first name too, but not much else.

In Keiko's poor defence, she can hardly be blamed for her lack of effort in making a good impression on new people. She never had to try to impress anybody, make them curious to get to know her or hold her in high regard—that much she proved just the day prior, when she was introduced to Yūji and spitting at his feet with a low hiss of 'you disgust me, count your days' would surely have had the same effect in the boy's mind than their actual exchange did.